


The Farthest Moon

by EyesHalfFamiliar



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: AU: Kerberos Fate-Swap, M/M, Pining Shiro (Voltron), Wingman Matt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-07-14
Packaged: 2018-09-17 16:33:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9333554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EyesHalfFamiliar/pseuds/EyesHalfFamiliar
Summary: Shiro was the Garrison's golden boy, but not necessarily their best pilot. That title went to Keith, and when the time came to select someone for the upcoming Kerberos Mission, the talented young firebrand was chosen in Shiro's place.But then, of course, "pilot error" happened...This story is an exploration of what could have been if Keith had been taken by the Galra in place of Shiro. Featuring Shiro in love, Keith not realizing he's in love, and me trying to meet my angst quota for the year.





	1. "T-Minus 10, 9, 8..."

**Author's Note:**

> This fic started out as a Tumblr post I made to toy with the idea of Keith taking Shiro's place on the Kerberos Mission. That idea quickly spiraled out of control and, well, THIS happened.
> 
> Fair warning, I know very little about space travel and next to nothing about piloting, so if you're someone who does know about that kind of thing... Well, you have my apologies for this chapter.

“Our goal is to reach the probe, retrieve it intact, and return to the docking station to refuel,” Shiro explained from the simulator's overly firm co-pilot chair. “The focus here is on precision handling, not speed. If you use too much fuel retrieving the probe, you won't have enough left to dock safely, so try to make as few course corrections as possible.”

Next to him in the pilot's chair, Keith huffed out a sigh.

“Shiro, I've run this sim twice already. I know what I'm supposed to do.”

“Yes, but this is your official run going for the record time,” Shiro reminded him. “So, you'll have to put up with a bit of formality.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“We are fully-fueled, and all systems are go,” the older pilot said, snapping back into business mode. “Shuttle Theta-S4 is ready to depart from the docking station. Is the pilot ready to depart?”

“Past ready.”

Shiro's mouth twitched into an amused grin, but he restrained the expression. Keith's favorite simulations were the ones that demanded fast reflexes and rewarded his daring maneuvers. This one, by contrast, focused almost entirely on careful, precise corrections along a simple flight path.

In other words: boring.

But these techniques were still essential for a pilot to master, especially one like Keith who'd risen so rapidly through the Garrison's pilot program that even the higher-ups had taken notice. It was only a matter of time before he was asked to fly in a real mission, and Shiro intended to see him ready.

“Docking clamps are disengaged. You are clear to engage thrusters. Gently, this time.”

“You're still not letting that go?” Keith huffed.

“Not all of us like to start our missions by introducing our stomachs to our spines,” Shiro commented dryly.

An amused smile touched Keith's face, much to Shiro's pleasure. This kind of light back-and-forth was old territory for them: Shiro, the more cautious, staid pilot versus Keith, the brash up-and-comer. Mutual respect kept the banter from escalating beyond gentle ribbing. Really, their differences just came down to personal style.

And skill.

“Initial thruster burst complete,” Keith announced, finally deigning to use professionally appropriate phrasing. “What's our fuel supply look like?”

“We're at 87.3%. That was a pretty gentle takeoff coming from you.”

“Well, apparently I have delicate cargo to consider.”

Shiro laughed.

“I'm not that bad. Didn't you make one of the other cadets on your team throw up in the simulator your first year?”

“It was one time!”

Shiro just chuckled. The banter was more to distract Keith from getting bored than anything else. When Keith got bored in the simulator, he had a tendency to experiment with... novel flight paths. Shiro had been serious about wanting to keep his stomach where it was.

Next to him, Keith sighed.

“Seriously, a robot could do this. All I'm doing is keeping the shuttle straight.”

Keith was slouched in his seat petulantly as images of celestial objects whipped by on the screen. He was steering the primary control wheel with one finger, in clear violation of several safety regulations.

“Both hands on the wheel, Keith,” Shiro prompted. “This kind of flying is good practice for the minor manual corrections you'll have to make in order to dock with space stations.”

“I know how to dock at a station, Shiro.”

“But you always take extra fuel to do it. I know you can do better.”

The thing about space travel was that you really only needed fuel when you were accelerating, decelerating, or changing course. With almost no friction to slow a vessel down, hardly any fuel was required simply to maintain speed. A good thing, since every ounce of fuel sent up from Earth also happened to cost a good bit of fuel in order to reach escape velocity.

This made efficient piloting an essential skill. The fewer course corrections a pilot had to make, the less fuel they expended, which meant lighter payloads sent up from Earth and longer missions out in space. Of course, Keith had always cared less about efficiency than speed.

At the admonishment, he made a noncommittal noise and pointedly looked straight ahead rather than at Shiro.

“Keith.” Shiro used his name to catch his attention, switching to a more encouraging tone. “I know this isn't your favorite sim, but I know you can do better on it if you take it seriously. Your times on all the other sims are incredible. Half of them are new records! I just want to see that you can do this type of flying if and when you need to. Then you can go back to figuring out how fast you can slingshot around the moon in a prototype shuttle without turning yourself into paste.”

“Alright,” Keith sighed. “Fine. I'll take it seriously.”

It was a few more minutes of easy flying before the probe came into range. This, Shiro knew, would be the hard part. The probe was a small cylinder – less than three feet long and a foot in diameter, like a large pill – drifting at a constant speed and trajectory through the vastness of space. The course and speed of the probe changed each time the simulation was run, forcing the pilot to calculate the necessary changes to their own speed and direction on the fly.

Their shuttle was equipped with mechanical arms suitable for grabbing the probe, but in order to use them, Keith would have to bring the shuttle in close to the probe and match its speed and trajectory without either bumping into the probe (changing its course and forcing him to chase after it) or catching it in the flare of his thrusters (frying its instruments and data).

“Closing on the probe,” Keith announced.

It could be a tall order, even for a skilled pilot. Getting the angle and change of speed wrong could easily force course corrections that burned through the shuttle's scant fuel reserves, leaving it unable to return to the station or, even if it could return, to dock safely. Shiro had probably heard more creative swearing emerge from the simulator for this scenario than any other the Garrison offered.

“Preparing to match course.”

So naturally, Keith had no problem.

With a smooth, rapid adjustment of controls, Keith brought the shuttle in close to the probe in a gentle, twisting arc that Shiro knew he couldn't hope to replicate. It wasn't as thrilling as the high-speed twists and dives he knew Keith favored, but the purely instinctive grace of it still took Shiro's breath away.

“Good work, Keith,” he praised, restraining himself from offering anything more effusive. “Proceeding with the retrieval.”

The arms came out automatically and latched onto the probe with a magnetized grip. While the mechanical arms went about their business, Keith leaned back in his chair, tapping the armrest as if he hadn't just performed the most elegant zero-gravity approach Shiro had seen in his life.

“How's our fuel looking?” he asked, glancing over.

“We're at 74.9%. I think that's actually the best I've seen.”

“Well, that's something, at least.”

“Retrieval complete. Ready to come about,” Shiro slipped easily back into his role as co-pilot as the probe was stashed away. “Take it nice and steady and you should beat the record time without any trouble.”

Shiro would know. The current record was his.

It always seemed to surprise people how little rivalry existed between the two men. Shiro was just a few years older and had been the Garrison's “golden boy” before Keith showed up. The older pilot had passed all his courses, maneuvered skillfully through the sims, and generally shown a talent and aptitude for piloting and leadership that made him stand out above the rest. Shiro didn't think too much of it. Success was just the natural result of combining patience and diligence with a little natural talent.

But Keith? Keith was something else altogether.

Keith had come out of nowhere. Watching his early sims – the ones that, for most cadets, ended up being literal 'crash courses' – was like watching a young hawk tumble out of the nest and find its wings half way down. The initial motions were awkward as he grappled with the unfamiliar controls, but within moments everything smoothed out and he was flying as if he'd been born to it.

Shiro had never seen anything like it, and after getting to know the pilot himself, all he'd wanted to do was help that sharp-eyed, socially-awkward boy reach his full potential. He wanted to do his part in helping Keith rise to the top, even if it meant seeing a few of his own records smashed in the process.

“Fuel is at 67.2%,” Shiro announced as Keith finished coming about. The maneuver had been just as smooth as his approach on the probe. “It should only take about 15% to get us up to a good cruising speed and the same amount to slow down again for docking. We'll have plenty to spare.”

“Hmm...”

That tone immediately set off warning bells in Shiro's head.

“No,” he said flatly.

“No what?”

“No to whatever you're thinking of doing right now,” Shiro stated firmly. “You said you were going to take this simulation seriously, and I'm holding you to that.”

“I am taking it seriously!” Keith protested. “I just don't see why we can only use 15% of our fuel for acceleration when we've got enough to use 30% and still slow down safely.”

“We'd be approaching the docking station too fast.”

“Not if we started slowing down sooner.”

“Yes, but choosing the exact moment and rate of deceleration that would keep us from hitting the station without crushing ourselves under the G-forces would be...”

Keith looked at him expectantly, already bright-eyed at the prospect of conquering the odds, and Shiro knew he'd lost the battle.

“Alright,” he conceded. “You're the pilot. We'll do it your way.”

He'd always been weak when it came to Keith's enthusiasm.

A point proven yet again as Keith grinned brightly, the expression tugging at Shiro's chest, before fixing his eyes straight ahead with the laser intensity that Shiro had come to associate with Keith's best flying.

“Starting acceleration burst.”

Shiro tried not to cringe as Keith burned through twice the fuel he would have considered advisable. Their speed crept up correspondingly, pressing him back into his seat.

“Trust me on this, Shiro,” Keith said, never taking his eyes off the view screen.

“I do trust you.”

“Then why are checking your flight harness?”

Shiro looks down at his hands, surprised. Well, it wasn't exactly an inappropriate response to traveling at speeds that would incinerate them if they were passing through an atmosphere.

“Never hurts to be careful.”

The docking station was growing rapidly on the monitor, much faster than in any of Shiro's runs. He bit back the reflex to tell Keith to slow down. No back-seat piloting would be welcomed at this point, nor would it help. The best thing he could do was sit back and let Keith do what he was born to do.

And if Shiro happened to be keeping a tighter-than-usual grip on his arm rests, well, that was no one's business but his own.

As the seconds ticked by and Keith still wasn't slowing, Shiro started to get nervous. Sure, the simulator wouldn't turn them into space debris the same way a real collision or too-quick stop would, but it would still be unpleasant.

Not to mention a waste of an otherwise excellent run.

“Engaging reverse thrusters. Beginning docking approach.”

Far later than Shiro would have liked, Keith started to brake. He could feel the press of the simulated G's, knowing that the sensation was far less intense than what he would have experienced from such a maneuver in real life. Judging by the readouts, if this had been a real flight, he would have been feeling more than a bit light-headed. Nonetheless, the computed G-forces were less than what was required to render a healthy human in a compression suit unconscious, if just barely, so the simulation continued.

The docking station grew larger and larger in Shiro's sight and he spared a moment to glance over at Keith. The young pilot was completely absorbed in the task at hand, eyes locked on the station ahead while his hands made minute adjustments to the controls. He didn't have to look at his hands to know how to move them; he hadn't asked for fuel levels. Keith was going completely by feel, as if the awkward Theta-class shuttle were an extension of his body rather than a tool that he wielded.

Shiro almost didn't notice when the craft slid into place with hardly a shudder, only jerking out of his reverie when a computerized voice announced the end of the scenario.

**“Probe Retrieval Concluded. Outcome: Success. Time: 22:35.16.”**

“Yes!” Keith exclaimed, face lighting up with unabashed excitement.

“Definitely a new record!” Shiro laughed breathlessly.

“So, does that mean you're getting dinner again?” Keith asked, turning the full force of his victorious smile Shiro's way.

He didn't smile like that nearly often enough, simple and honest and joyful, and Shiro had no immunity to it.

“You've earned it.”

Shiro offered his hand as they stood, half to help Keith out of his seat and half to shake his hand in congratulations. He double-checked the simulator to make sure it saved the record of their flight and added his signature as observer, confirming that it had been a clean run. Soon, the network would update the Garrison's records to reflect the new record, and its holder.

“Come on.” Shiro clapped a familiar hand on Keith's shoulder. “Let's head back to the dorms to change. Then you can tell me where you want to go.”

“Right.”

They left the simulation room and made it about half way down the hall before Commander Iverson stopped them.

“Kogane! I need you in my office.”

Shiro glanced quickly over at Keith. Had something happened? Sure, Keith had gotten in trouble for insubordination and other minor offenses a lot his first year, but since Shiro had taken him under his wing and started helping him navigate Garrison life, those issues had all but stopped. Keith just shrugged at him, openly confused.

Iverson huffed.

“You're not in trouble, Kogane, but this will take a few minutes.”

“Go on,” Shiro encouraged, catching Keith's hesitant expression. “We'll meet up back at my place.”

Keith nodded hesitantly and headed off with the commander.

Shiro's face slipped into a concerned frown as soon as Keith's back was turned. What could it possibly be? If it were about the new record time, that wouldn't have required a trip to the office. And if Keith wasn't in trouble, then... what else? Something about his future maybe? A mission?

Shiro shook his head to ward off speculative thoughts and started back for the dorms. There was no point in wondering without further information. Keith would tell him what was going on soon enough, he was sure.

–

“Kerberos!” Keith exhaled for perhaps the dozenth time. “They want me to fly the Kerberos Mission, Shiro!”

Keith was pacing back and forth in Shiro's room, unable to keep still. It had taken the entire walk back to the dorms for the news to sink in, and now that it had, the enormity of it wouldn't let him sit down.

“It's an incredible opportunity,” Shiro said, sounding impressed. “What did you say?”

“I said...” Keith sighed, running a hand through his hair. “I said I'd have to think about it.”

“Why?” Shiro frowned.

As if it wasn’t obvious!

“You know why!” Keith burst out. “It was supposed to be your mission.”

For the last few months, rumors had been flying about the Garrison’s latest project: a mission to search for life on the very edges of the Sol system. Matt and Sam Holt had already been selected as the mission’s engineer and biologist, respectively, and almost everyone had expected the famous Takashi Shirogane to get the pilot’s slot.

Aside from being a skilled pilot and team leader, he had an existing friendship with Matt Holt that would have meshed well with the requirement to spend months together in confined quarters. It made sense.

“Those were just rumors,” Shiro said dismissively. “Speculation.”

“Everyone knows you're the more experienced pilot!”

“But not the better one.”

That admission brought Keith up short.

“Shiro...”

Shiro smiled, and Keith thought he saw a touch of envy there, if only a little.

“Keith, today you broke my fastest time on one of my best simulations by 4 minutes. _Minutes_. Most records are broken by seconds, or fractions of seconds. People are going to be studying your approach technique for years to come.”

“It wasn't technique,” Keith protested. “I just... did what felt right.”

Keith knew he was good at flying – knew that he was good with anything that had an engine and went fast – but the gap between what was easy and natural for him and what was easy and natural for everyone else still caught him off-guard at times.

“I know,” Shiro said, smiling warmly. “You're an amazing pilot with great instincts. You can do things that everyone else says are impossible. That's why you're the right choice for this mission. Whatever happens, I know you'll be able to handle it.”

“You're not upset?” Keith asked hesitantly. Because really, that was the crux of it for him. Shiro had given him so much, and no matter how long Keith waited for the other shoe to drop, it never had. Shiro was just _there_ , giving him his time and attention and asking nothing in return. Keith had never been one for hero-worship, but he looked up to Shiro more than he could comfortably put into words.

How could Keith take something he knew Shiro wanted for himself?

“I'm a bit disappointed,” Shiro confessed at length. “Flying out to the edge of the solar system to look for alien life? It's an incredible adventure, but there will be other missions for me.”

Keith wasn’t entirely convinced, and it must have shown judging by how serious Shiro’s expression went.

“Keith, do you want this mission?”

Drawing in a breath, Keith nodded.

“Yeah. Yeah, I really do.”

“Then accept it,” Shiro said firmly, his smile returning. “First thing tomorrow morning. I’ll even go with you to the office, so I can be the first one to congratulate you when it becomes official.”

At long last, Keith let a smile of his own spread across his face.

“I will. Thanks, Shiro.”

“Anytime.” Shiro beamed at him, looking poster-boy handsome in a way that was just unfair. “Now, it looks like we have two things to celebrate! You'd better pick a really nice restaurant.”

“How about that place with the cheesy breadsticks?”

“I said a _nice_ restaurant.”

“The Pizza Pit is nice!”

“Alright, fine,” Shiro conceded, grabbing his coat. “But we'll stop somewhere else for dessert.”

“Deal.”

-

The ensuing months were a whirlwind of training, briefings, and simulations. Shiro didn't get to see Keith nearly as often as he was used to, and Matt was no less swamped. Still, Shiro remained relentlessly supportive. This was the opportunity of a lifetime for both his friends, and he was going to help them make the most of it.

Far quicker than seemed possible, the day of the launch arrived.

A huge crowd had turned out – reporters, officers’ families, and those lucky civilians with enough money and connections to get a seat – packing the bleachers that had been set up at a safe distance. Only a few people were allowed near the shuttle at boarding time, including the ground crew, astronauts, and their family members. By Keith’s request, Shiro was there as well.

Shiro said his goodbyes to Matt first. He kept it encouraging, but short, knowing Matt would want to spend most of his scant allotted time exchanging farewells with his mother and sister. The two men shook hands and pulled each other in for a one-armed hug.

“Don't worry,” the engineer whispered teasingly, apparently unable to resist a parting jab. “I'll look after your boyfriend.”

If anyone noticed the embarrassed blush on Shiro's cheeks, they had the courtesy not to mention it.

Shiro turned to Keith and felt his heart settle into his throat at the sight of him in his space suit, helmet tucked under one arm. On his face, Shiro could see the potent mix of exhilaration and raw nerves he must have been feeling. In just minutes, his friend, his protégé, would be leaving behind the planet where he’d lived his whole life – the planet most of their species never left – to explore the far reaches of space untouched by human influence.

One giant leap for mankind, indeed.

“Well,” Keith said awkwardly, never quite comfortable in emotional situations, “I guess it’s time.”

In that moment, Shiro almost confessed everything. His tongue was millimeters away from spilling words of adoration he'd never be able to take back – from forming the “I love you” he knew had to be shining out of his eyes. He bit the words back, half from habit and half from good sense.

Matt would have called it cowardice.

“I'm so proud of you,” he said instead. The words were just as true, but far easier to say. He placed his hands on Keith’s shoulders in a familiar reassurance. “You’re going to be amazing up there.”

Keith’s cheeks flushed at the praise, and Shiro thought he saw him start to tear up, but the young pilot kept his composure.

“Thank you, Shiro,” Keith said, absolutely beaming. “For everything. I never would have made it this far without you.”

Shiro could have lingered far longer in that moment, but the launch was running on a tight schedule. Soon enough, he and the earth-bound Holts were shuffled off to special front-row seats to wait as the astronauts boarded and the final checks were made.

The countdown began over the loud-speakers, and Shiro had to remind himself to take even breaths. Launchpad accidents were rare these days, but there was always a chance. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Mrs. Holt clutching her daughter’s hands. He understood the feeling.

And then the rocket was blasting off, ascending straight up into the bright blue sky. Even as far back as their seats were, Shiro could feel the rumble of the ignition in his chest. His gaze followed the rocket as if pinned there, watching until the ever-more-distant spark of fire faded entirely from view, taking the brightest shard of his heart with it.

Finally, Shiro remembered how to breathe.

He stood on legs that felt oddly weak and told himself it was because he’d been too worked up to eat breakfast that morning. He tried to pretend that he didn’t feel oddly stretched, as if the rocket had taken a part of him with it.

‘Six months,’ he reminded himself. ‘It will only be six months, and the first and last two weeks will have live messaging and video feeds.’

He gave the sky another long look before heading for his car.

Keith would be fine. Shiro believed that. He was the most gifted pilot of their generation and had a brilliant scientist and engineer along with him. Whatever the universe threw at him, Keith would handle it with his usual skill and uncanny intuition, and then he’d come home.

Shiro believed that.


	2. Pilot Error

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Galra appear, and people in positions of authority are assholes about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I meant to get this out over the weekend, but I was binge-watching Season 2. No spoilers this chapter, but it has definitely made me rethink how later events will go!

Keith regained consciousness to the pressure-pain of an unforgiving metal floor under his knees, the bite of metal against his wrists, and the harsh sound of an unknown voice.

They'd made it to Kerberos. Matt and Mr. Holt had set up their equipment and started collecting samples. Then... then that ship had appeared, alien and enormous. There'd been a beam of purple light, and then... this.

“...primitive scientists. I doubt they know anything of value.”

Bleary-eyed, Keith raised his head to take in the dimly-lit room. Matt and Mr. Holt were next to him, kneeling with their hands bound behind them, looking just as dazed as he was. Behind them stood a pair of large robots, each holding some type of gun. A furtive glance behind him showed that Keith was likewise guarded. They were all stripped down to their thermal long-sleeves and pants, their protective space suits nowhere to be found.

The speaker stood in front of them with its – his? - back turned, facing a glowing red screen in which lurked a dark, ominous figure. Neither the creature in the room nor the one on the screen were human. Too tall and too purple. Aliens? Had they seriously been abducted by aliens?

“Take them back to the main fleet for interrogation.”

“Um, excuse me!” Mr. Holt spoke up, getting the aliens' attention. “I think we've had some sort of misunderstanding.”

Keith tested the cuffs holding his wrists behind his back. They were slightly loose, as if intended for some larger creature. If he twisted his hand and pulled just right, he might be able to get free. There were three robots and one alien in the room. The alien had no obvious weapons, but the robots had their guns, along with some kind of strange sword resting at each one's left side.

“We're scientists, not soldiers,” Mr. Holt continued. “If we could all just talk for a moment, I'm sure-”

The sharp crack of a gun striking the back of Mr. Holt's head cut his attempt at inter-species diplomacy short. Matt could only cry out as he watched.

“DAD!!”

Keith's wariness morphed into rage, and his lips pulled back in a snarl.

“Take them away,” their captor declared disinterestedly.

The robots started to move, and Keith whipped around, ripping one hand free of the cuffs. Pain lit up his nerves, but only skin-deep. He grabbed his robot guard’s sword with bloody hands and brought the blade down on the machine’s arms, smashing them before it could raise its gun.

“Restrain him!”

Keith rolled forward and heard the floor scorch where he’d stood. He charged the robot behind Matt, keeping the bulk of it between himself and the third machine. He side-stepped its line of fire, letting the next shot go past him, and then slammed bodily into it, knocking it into the third robot and unbalancing them both.

He jumped on top of the piled machines and stabbed down, piercing the top one's chest plate and making it spark wildly.

“Keith! Look out!”

Keith glanced up at Matt's warning, just in time to catch the impression of something bright and sharp headed his way. He dove to the side and came up in a roll – clumsily, as he tried not to impale himself on his own weapon – and saw that their alien captor had joined the fray. He held a weapon that was shaped like a sword, but the blade looked like it was made of pure energy.

Keith had little time to recover, dodging again as the alien slashed at him. On the next attack, Keith raised his sword to block, only to watch it get cut in half. He dropped to the ground, barely quick enough to keep his head.

Keith found himself forced into a retreat, dodging swipes of the glowing blade over and over, trying to find some opening to counterattack. He needed a weapon. He needed a plan. He needed-

Pain exploded bright and hot in his right arm, forcing him to his knees with a cry. His eyes darted, searching for the cause.

The third robot.

He'd knocked it down under the other one, but hadn't finished it. Now the barrel of its gun was pointed in his direction, and Keith understood exactly why his arm hurt so much.

Suddenly, he felt a thin, hot line press against his throat and froze. The alien's energy sword was less than a centimeter from his skin. Keith could smell the longer strands of his hair singing from the heat of the blade.

“Emperor Zarkon, I think it might be best if we put this pest out of its misery.”

Keith had forgotten completely about the ominous figure in the view screen. Moving just his eyes, he stared at the dark visage. Had he been watching this whole time?

“I have a better idea,” the 'emperor' replied coolly. “Bring him here.”

The alien grabbed Keith by his uninjured arm and dragged him forward, keeping the sword near his throat. Again, Keith found himself on his knees, this time glaring directly up at the so-called emperor.

“You may not look like a Galra, but you fight almost like one of our own,” the emperor – _Zarkon_ , the other had called him – said thoughtfully. It sounded almost like a compliment. “How would you like to serve the greatest empire in the universe?”

“How would you like to go fuck yourself?” Keith shot back.

“I see.” Zarkon shifted his gaze to the one remaining robot standing next to the Holts. At some point during the struggle, Matt had made it to his father's side and was kneeling over his unconscious form, wide-eyed.

“Kill the small one.”

“No! Wait!” Keith tried to struggle to his feet, but the creature holding him had an iron grip on his shoulder.

Zarkon gestured for the robot to stop.

“Is that a change of heart?”

Keith couldn't see any other way. Even if he got free again, he had no weapon that could defeat his opponent, and anything he tried would almost certainly result in the deaths of Matt and Mr. Holt. Bitterly, he dropped his shoulders as the fight finally went out of him.

“What do you want from me?”

On the dark red screen above him, Zarkon grinned.

-

_PILOT ERROR_

The words echoed in Shiro's mind as he strode blindly toward Iverson’s office. His head felt fuzzy and numb as the words played over and over like an echo in an empty room.

_Crash on Kerberos… Pilot error._

There had to be some kind of mistake. The news had it wrong. Someone would have notified him.

He was in the office building before he had time to notice how quickly he’d made it across campus. Had he run? He hadn’t meant to, but he was breathing as hard as if he had.

Shiro had no idea what his expression looked like, but apparently it was enough to make people standing in the hall jump out of his way unprompted.

_Pilot error…_

He shoved Iverson’s door open without knocking, startling the small group crowded inside. They all looked like high-level faculty, but he honestly couldn't bring himself to care.

“What the hell are you-”

“Is it true?” Shiro demanded without preamble, completely disregarding the formalities for addressing a superior officer. “The Kerberos crash. It’s all over the news.”

“It’s true,” Iverson confirmed, his tone clipped. “Now leave. This is a closed meeting. Who forgot to lock the door? Henderson?”

The confirmation hit him like a physical blow. That meant Keith, Matt, Professor Holt... They were all...

Shiro forced down the shock and kept going.

“They said it was pilot error.”

“Because it _was_ pilot error,” Iverson stated, his patience obviously wearing thin, even for the Garrison’s star pilot.

“I _saw_ Keith’s practice runs for the Kerberos landing. I trained him myself! If he crashed, there must have been a mechanical failure, electromagnetic interference, _something_.”

“Sometimes pilots make mistakes,” Iverson stated, moving forward to crowd Shiro out the door. “The loss of the Kerberos team is regrettable, but there’s nothing we can do about it now.”

“I want access to the records transmitted just before the crash,” Shiro insisted, refusing to be moved in an unprecedented show of obstinance.

“They’ve been classified.”

“Classified?” Shiro echoed, frowning. “According to protocol, all data collected from Galaxy Garrison’s exploratory missions is part of the public domain. You can’t just-”

“Private First Class Takashi Shirogane!” Commander Iverson snapped in a tone that instantly straightened Shiro’s spine. “Don’t presume you’re in a position to quote protocol to me! Now, I’m going to let this little show of insubordination slide, but only because I know you had friends on that shuttle and because you’re the best pilot the Garrison has now.”

When Shiro had no quick response, Iverson’s manner softened, if only by a hair.

“Take the rest of the day off. Hell, take the week if that’s what it takes to get your head on straight. Just do what you need to do so that when you come back, you’re ready to work. After this mess, Galaxy Garrison will be counting on you more than ever.”

“...Yes, sir.”

Finally, Shiro let himself be herded out the door. Vaguely, he heard it click shut and lock in front of him. He stood there staring at it for several long minutes before he could will his feet to take him elsewhere.

_Pilot error..._

-

**SIX MONTHS EARLIER**

The Galaxy Garrison Library had that generic, government-built look, as if all of the furnishings had been bought wholesale at the lowest competitive bid. The carpet was short and stiff with a pattern that probably did wonders to hide stains. The tables and chairs were a sturdy mix of metal and wood that was great for the posture but hard on the ass and elbows, as Matt well knew after spending so many hours with them.

“So you're really not jealous?” he asked, prompting a sigh of exasperation from his best friend and study-buddy.

Shiro gave him a tired look from across the table, currently covered in scrap paper and equations for calculating the ideal trajectory of a shuttle attempting to use the gravity of a celestial body to make course corrections. Basic stuff, really, but Shiro still liked his input sometimes.

“Why does everyone keep asking me that?”

“Because everyone knew it was your mission,” Matt pressed.

“It wasn't my mission,” the pilot said with the long-suffering air of someone who’d clarified a point a dozen times already. “It wasn't anyone's mission until the final decision got handed down.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I'm a little disappointed, alright?” Shiro confessed at last. “I was looking forward to going on an adventure with my best friend to the edge of the solar system. But Keith's the better pilot. He deserves this.”

“And you're sure you're not just saying that because he's your boyfriend?” Matt asked slyly.

“He's not my boyfriend!”

“Watch your volume there, Golden Boy. We are in a library.” Matt had never been able to resist a chance to sass Shiro when his normally-unflappable friend got, well, flapped.

“He's not my boyfriend,” Shiro repeated at a much more reasonable volume. His tone was even, but his cheeks were definitely looking a bit pink.

“Only because you haven't said anything to him.”

“We've been over this, Matt. I'm mentoring him. It wouldn't be appropriate.”

“Why not? You're his upperclassman, not his instructor.”

“But he still looks up to me. He still relies on me for help. I don't want him to feel like that help comes with strings attached.”

“You've known each other for, what, a year now? If he hasn't realized by now that you're not that kind of guy, this relationship is already doomed.”

“You know, when we agreed to meet up, I thought you'd be helping me study, not lecturing me on my love life.”

“Or lack thereof.”

“ _Matt_.”

“Okay, okay, fine,” Matt conceded. “I'm just tired of seeing you pine after the guy without actually doing anything about it. It's not healthy, you know.”

“I'm going to tell him. Eventually.”

“How about this: you promise to tell him after we all get back from Kerberos, and I'll get off your back about it.”

“Matt-”

“You're worried he'd feel pressured because you help him with his flying. But the way I hear it, he's broken all kinds of records, including some of yours, and in less than a year, he's going to be getting back from a ground-breaking mission on which he's the sole pilot. That sure doesn't sound like some lost doe in the woods to me.”

“If I agree to tell him – _after_ the mission – will you stop asking me about it?”

“Cross my heart!”

Shiro sighed.

“Alright! Fine. I'll do it. Now can we focus on physics? These example problems are practically gibberish. You've had this professor before, right?”

For a while, they managed to buckle down and get some work done. Matt figured out where Shiro was getting stuck and helped him muddle through. Seriously, Professor Montgomery always had the most awkward phrasing on his problems. Half the work was in just figuring out what he wanted you to do. Privately, Matt took back everything he'd ever said about English courses not being necessary for STEM majors.

“I'm honestly kind of disappointed you're not coming with us,” Matt confessed during a lull. “How cool would it have been to discover evidence of extraterrestrial life with my best friend? We could have gotten matching alien microbe tattoos.”

Shiro snorted.

“There's a missed opportunity. I'm sure we'd both have looked great with pictures of unicellular blobs permanently etched on our skin.”

“Hey! We don't know if they'd be unicellular. We don't even know if they'd have cells. We're talking about _alien lifeforms_! They could have physical structures never before encountered on Earth.”

“Have you been hanging out with your dad's xenobiologist friends again?”

“They came over for dinner last night. Mom accidentally over-salted the soup, and they spent the rest of the night talking about halophiles. She wasn't exactly thrilled about that. Seriously, though. I'm going to miss you. And your flying. After riding with you in the simulators for the last few years, I've kind of gotten used to a nice, smooth ride. Keith may be good, but _you've_ never made anyone lose their breakfast all over the console.”

“That was one time,” Shiro countered, defending his not-boyfriend. “I know Keith has a reputation for... acrobatics, but he knows the difference between a simulated mission and a real one. He won't take any risks unless he has to.”

“If you're sure.”

“I am. I know Keith, and I know that he'll do everything in his power to get you and your dad home safely.”

**PRESENT DAY**

_Well, Shiro, you weren't wrong._

After Keith's heroics had caught the attention of the scary purple space emperor, they'd all been transferred to another ship for transport. They'd put Keith in some kind of pod that healed his injuries, and under any other circumstances Matt would have been begging for the chance to take one apart. Instead, he'd been begging for them to put his dad in one as well.

“You want us as collateral so Keith does what you want, right? Well, it doesn't do you any good if one of us dies of a brain hemorrhage!”

His desperate argument had worked, though it had left Matt feeling a bit like he'd sold out his friend. He'd really come to like Keith after a few months of close-quarter occupancy. Behind the awkwardness and the resting bitch face, Keith was a really sincere, caring guy. But this was about Matt's _dad_. His dad whose brilliant mind was essential for every aspect of his life. His dad who, since that blow to the head, had a constant ringing in his ears and kept forgetting the answers to questions he'd just asked.

While the older Holt slept in the alien pod, Matt was left to see Keith off alone.

They were standing in some kind of holding cell with a floor that slanted up toward a wide door. Matt stood off to the side, flanked by robot guards while one of their alien captors – Galra, they called themselves – held Keith at gunpoint. Through the walls and ceiling, Matt could hear the roar of a waiting crowd, but it was definitely not a _human_ roar.

After that first escape attempt, their captors had fitted Keith with a more elaborate set of cuffs that restrained both his wrists and forearms behind his back. It didn't look even remotely comfortable, but Keith was putting on a brave face.

As the doors started to roll open, the Galra removed Keith's restraints and handed him a sword, keeping his large gun visibly trained on Keith the whole time. The young pilot accepted the blade, staring the Galra down with a steady gaze that Matt doubted he could ever replicate.

“Don't forget our deal.”

The Galra laughed. It was a loud, sharp sound, and it set Matt's nerves on edge. Well, _more_ on edge.

“Oh we won't, little warrior. Now go. Either success or death awaits you.”

With the door fully opened, the crowd was almost deafening. The coliseum-style seats were full of creatures unlike anything Matt had seen on Earth. The small part of him that wasn't freaking out wished his dad could be there to see them. Then several other creatures stepped into the Arena, and Matt changed his mind. Some of them looked Galran; others didn't. All of them looked dangerous, and all of them had weapons of their own.

Matt glanced back over at Keith and saw a flicker of genuine, wide-eyed terror behind that determined mask. He suddenly had the horrible feeling he was watching a man go to his death.

“Move,” their guard prompted, gesturing with his gun.

With leaden steps, Keith walked toward the door.

“Keith!” Matt called, because even if nothing he said could possibly matter right now, he still had to say _something_.

Keith paused and glanced back. The fear was hidden, but oh, it was definitely there. Matt tried to think of something to say. Something inspiring, like his dad might have said if he were there and not badly concussed. But nothing useful came to mind, and in the end, all Matt could say was the one unrealistic hope screaming out of his heart.

“Don't die.”

Keith nodded sharply, just once, before crossing the last few steps to the Arena floor. As the door slid shut behind him, Matt sagged, finally releasing a sob that had been building ever since Keith had cut this devil's bargain with their abductors.

No matter how the fight ended, there was little chance of Keith seeing Earth ever again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so the angst portion of the show begins!
> 
> For those curious, a halophile is a type of extremophile that lives in super salty environments that would kill most other organisms. Not really something you want people to bring up when they're talking about your cooking.
> 
> Also, getting hit on the head hard enough to black out for any length of time is super bad for you. Always get that shit checked out with a doctor.
> 
> I hope you guys like my version of Matt! He's had so little screen time that it's hard to get a feel for his character, so I've had to improvise a bit. “Wingman Matt” is definitely going to be a thing in this fic, but I don't want it to be Matt's _only_ thing.


	3. Those Left Behind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shiro is coping. Sort of.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter took longer than expected, because I kept having to massage the narrative structure to get it to do what I wanted. Hopefully it worked!

Shiro came back from his week of leave to a backlog of assignments and a referral for mandatory grief counseling, to be attended “until he improved”. Normally, Shiro would have been ashamed to have lost his composure in front of a room full of his superiors, but under the circumstances he just couldn’t bring himself to care. Keith was _gone_. Matt and Professor Holt were gone. Even after a week, he could barely wrap his head around it.

He was back at the Garrison and back to his courses on physics, astronomy, and aviation, but his mind wasn't all there. He sat at the desk in his room with textbooks, notebooks, and assignments in front of him and just stared as if he could will them to finish themselves.

_Just start small. Physics. It’s just applied mathematics. Matt even showed you which equations to use for these kinds of problems before he…_

Shiro's grip on his pencil tightened as his chest knotted.

The Garrison had sponsored a joint funeral for all three members of the Kerberos mission. Each empty coffin had been adorned with a lost astronaut’s formal pre-mission portrait to give mourners something to pay their respects to. In his photo, Keith was smiling, a bit tense but genuinely happy. Shiro could still remember helping him get ready – making sure his hair was brushed and his uniform was on straight.

_“Why is this such a big deal? It’s just a picture.”_

_“You're the sole pilot of a ground-breaking scientific mission. People will want to see what you look like, get to know you a bit.”_

_“If it’s about people getting to know me, why do I have to button my collar up all the way? I never wear my jacket like this.”_

_“Consider it the price of fame.”_

Shiro had never imagined that picture being used for this. He’d never _let_ himself imagine it.

Over the course of the event, it had become obvious that most of the guests were there for the Holts. At the Garrison, Sam Holt had been a well-loved Professor of Biology, and Matt had been a popular member of the Engineering Department. And then, of course, there had been the entire extended Holt family, including members who'd flown in from out of state for the funeral.

Shiro hadn't found a single person who was there just for Keith.

_Stop it_ , he told himself, forcing himself to reread the text of the problem his eyes kept skimming. _You need to focus._

Shiro tried tracing the lines of text with the tip of his pencil as he read, tried reading the words out loud to make them stick in his mind, but nothing worked.

Nothing ever seemed to work anymore.

His eyes drifted over to his bed and the boxes underneath it. He knew he probably shouldn't keep them, but he didn't know what else to do. Without any next of kin, the Garrison had planned to have some intern or secretary go through Keith's belongings and decide what to donate and what to throw away. Shiro had found the thought intolerable and volunteered to clean out Keith's old room himself.

At first, he'd tried to make an honest project of it. He'd thrown away some things, like a toothbrush and a surprisingly large stash of ketchup packets, but as soon as he got to the more obviously personal belongings he just got... stuck. What was he supposed to do with Keith's favorite books? the clothes that still smelled like his soap and deoderant? the old pair of taped-up headphones that Shiro had always urged him to replace, but could never quite convince him to let go of?

Shiro'd had a small breakdown half an hour in while trying to convince himself to put one of Keith's shirts in the “donate” pile. All he could think about was the way it had looked on Keith when they hung out in the evenings, watching “X-Files” on Keith's old DVDs. (It had been Keith's favorite show, and when he found out Shiro had never seen it, he'd insisted on hosting regular screenings to catch him up.)

Finally, Shiro admitted defeat. He couldn't stand to throw or even give anything away for strangers to use. So he'd simply boxed everything up and shoved the boxes under his bed to await the day he could finally muster the resolve to go through them properly.

It felt kind of wrong to be hoarding Keith's things like this, but there was no one around to deal with the remnants of the young pilot's life but him. No parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins... None that Keith had mentioned, at lease. Certainly none that had bothered to come to the funeral.

_Just think about the problem_ , Shiro told himself, trying again to reign in his straying thoughts. _Assuming the presence of an Earth-like atmosphere and gravity, what is the proper angle of entry for a shuttle traveling at... at..._

Shiro hadn't learned about Keith's family situation until a few months after they'd met. The younger pilot had come over to Shiro's room to study, and as the night wore on, the conversation had wandered as they got increasingly tipsy on sleep deprivation. Shiro could still remember the atmosphere of it, sleepy and intimate, the soft words and open laughter leaving him unable to care how tired he’d be the next day.

Keith had lost his parents young, he’d explained with a shrug, picking at cold take-out noodles. He’d never met his mom, and his dad had died in an accident when Keith was still little. After that, he’d gone into foster care. Early on, Keith had been labeled a ‘problem child’ – always going places he wasn’t supposed to, getting into fights, and refusing to listen to anyone just 'because they said so'. Few people had wanted to deal with him for long, and he'd pretty much just gotten passed from household to household until he aged out of the system.

Most of Keith’s foster parents had been good people; some of them hadn’t.

Keith hadn't elaborated on that point, and Shiro hadn't asked. He had the distinct feeling Keith wouldn’t have given him an answer anyway, and Shiro had been wary of pushing for more when he’d just been given so much. It gave Shiro a much better idea why Keith had always been so prickly and wary with new people and why he'd spent the first few weeks of their acquaintance keeping Shiro at a literal arm's length.

But that night Keith had trusted Shiro enough to sit right next to him alone in his room. Trusted him enough to peel back the bandages on old wounds for him to see. When Keith finished speaking, Shiro had taken a risk and pulled him into a gentle hug. He’d moved slowly, careful to telegraph his intent, but Keith had still tensed up. Shiro had been ready to let go and apologize for overstepping himself, but then Keith had just… relaxed, melting slowly into the touch. He’d ended up burying his face in Shiro's shoulder and staying there for a long while just breathing, just letting himself be held.

Shiro's heart had almost pounded right out of his chest.

He'd never thought of Keith as particularly small – his passion and intensity made his slight figure a moot point – but the feeling of Keith's lithe frame nestled against him had kindled something tender and protective in his chest. For several long minutes, Shiro had held him as tightly as he dared, as if he could erase years of loneliness and abandonment by touch alone.

The memory of Keith’s warmth and weight settled against his chest had lingered with Shiro like a physical touch. For days afterward, he’d caught himself smiling softly at odd times. Matt had thought he’d finally gotten laid. When Shiro explained that they’d just hugged (keeping the details of their conversation to himself), Matt had stared at him with his mouth hanging open before declaring him ‘completely hopeless’ in a tone that sounded almost pained.

They’d never really talked about the conversation or the hug after the fact, but after that night Keith had seemed to unwind a bit around him. He’d smiled more easily and let Shiro into his personal space without bristling, giving Shiro the impression that he'd truly made it into Keith's highly selective inner circle. It was a victory as thrilling as any Shiro had ever achieved.

After that night, Shiro had thought he understood Keith, at least a little. That he had a good idea of how he felt and how he saw the world and his place in it. But after standing at that funeral where Keith had no family and few friends – after gathering up the pieces of a life he had no claim to, because there was no one else who could – Shiro was left feeling like he'd never really understood at all.

He hoped Keith hadn't felt alone at the end.

The thought made Shiro's eyes burn, and he took a few deep, harsh breaths to force down the sob trying to claw its way up the back of his throat. He rubbed his hands over his face and exhaled sharply.

_Fuck._

It had been almost three weeks since the crash – two weeks since he got back from leave – and no matter how hard he tried to focus his mind just kept slipping back to the crash, the funeral, and everything that had led up to them. His counselor, Dr. Mehta, had assured him that poor concentration was a common side-effect of grief, but that was little reassurance when Shiro's work kept piling up and his instructors and superior officers looked at him with increasingly concerned and expectant eyes.

Speaking of which...

His phone alarm went off, reminding Shiro it was time to leave for his counseling appointment. He glanced back at the stack of assignments, no closer to being done now than when he'd sat down almost an hour ago. He gave a resigned sigh and stood.

The counselor's office was located across campus in the Garrison’s main office building. The squat, practical structure housed the offices of the higher-ranking officers and bureaucrats, along with other services that it made sense to centralize, including on-campus mental health services.

Dr. Mehta’s office was as neat and orderly as any officer’s place of work, but the overstuffed furniture made it feel a bit homier. A couple floor lamps had been added to make up for the window blinds, which were kept shuttered for patient privacy. The overall effect made the room feel cozy, if a bit cloistered and stuffy.

“The last time we talked, you were still having attention issues,” Dr. Mehta commented, referring to his notes. “Has that improved at all?”

He was a relatively slight man with wire-rimmed glasses, probably in his mid-to-late-thirties if the traces of gray in his hair were any indication. He'd mentioned once that his family came from India, though Shiro couldn't remember which region. Dr. Mehta himself had grown up in Milwaukee and took any opportunity to complain about the desert heat.

“A little?” But Shiro knew as soon as he spoke that it was just wishful thinking. He sighed. “No. Not really. Not at all, actually.”

“You’ve mentioned before that exercise helps you focus. Have you been keeping up with your usual routine?”

“Yeah. Added to it, even.” It was one of the few things Shiro could actually get himself to do, the only thing that seemed to bypass that mental wall that made it so hard to get anything accomplished. As long as he could get himself to the gym, he could run and lift weights until he was almost too fatigued to move.

He didn’t spar as much as he used to. Before Kerberos, he’d always done that with Keith, and every time he got on the mat now, he kept expecting him to be there – either squaring up against him or taking a break off to the side.

“And this hasn’t helped at all?”

“No.”

Dr. Mehta gave him a considering look, and Shiro tensed. They’d talked about the loss of the mission more directly before, giving Shiro the chance to vent his grief. During the first couple sessions, he’d pretty much used up the box of tissues Dr. Mehta left out on the coffee table for patients. It was something Shiro had needed, and he knew it would do him good to get the rest of his feeling off his chest. But still, he held back.

Maybe it was paranoia, but Commander Iverson’s willingness to classify public documents made Shiro suspect he wouldn’t hesitate to force a breach of doctor-patient confidentiality if he thought the information he’d gain was worth the trouble. Information, like Shiro's suspicion that Galaxy Garrison was lying about how the Kerberos mission had been lost. If that knowledge got out, it would all but destroy Shiro's chances for advancement within the Garrison, and however downtrodden he felt, Shiro still hadn't given up on his dream of exploring the solar system himself one day.

He’d also kept his affections for Keith a secret, but he'd begun to suspect Dr. Mehta already knew and was just waiting for him to “come out of the closet” on his own time.

Matt had always said he was hopelessly transparent.

When Shiro was silent under his gaze, Dr. Mehta finally relented.

“Everyone grieves in their own way and on their own schedule,” he said at last. “I can recommend more time off if you want. A week isn’t nearly long enough to mourn the loss of two good friends, regardless of what the brass might say on the matter.”

“No,” Shiro said instantly. “I feel better when I have something to do.”

“Even when you can’t focus your mind enough to do it?”

“Yeah.” He managed a short, mirthless chuckle. “Even then.”

They talked a bit longer, mostly discussing strategies to improve Shiro's concentration. Most were things he either already did or had tried before – more sleep, better food, more exercise, mindfulness meditation – but he agreed to experiment a bit anyway.

Just as he was preparing to leave, Dr. Mehta stopped him.

“I almost forgot to ask: have you still been holing up in the simulators, looking at those old recordings?”

After the mission had been declared lost – after everyone had heard and accepted that ‘pilot error’ had caused it – Shiro had started going over all of Keith’s old sim recordings, trying to find some fatal flaw in his technique or some overlooked bad habit that could have led to the crash. He’d spent so many hours watching and rewatching the recordings in the simulators that people had started to complain about the reduced availability.

“No,” he answered truthfully. “I took your advice on that one.”

“Good.” Dr. Mehta smiled approvingly. “Obsessing over what might have gone wrong won’t change the past. You'd only get bogged down in suppositions.”

Shiro nodded agreeably and left.

Dr. Mehta didn’t need to know that the reason that he’d stopped gong to the simulators was because he’d gone in late one night and downloaded all of Keith’s flight records onto a portable hard drive. Back during his first year as a cadet, Matt had hacked together an emulator that could play back sim recordings on a regular PC. Back then, Shiro had used it to review his own performance and study the technique of more advanced pilots. Now, he was using it for what amounted to forensic analysis.

It wasn’t as though Keith had never crashed in the sims, though it hadn’t been a common occurrence. Shiro had quickly identified all of Keith’s simulations that ended in crashes or catastrophic landings and started combing through them for patterns.

_I should have done that_ before _Kerberos._

Shiro pushed the self-deprecating thought aside, reminding himself that he'd always paid attention to Keith's technique and had always corrected errors as he noticed them. Going over recordings with a fine-tooth comb would have just been obsessive.

_I'm definitely not telling Dr. Mehta about this._

The root causes of Keith’s crashes usually fell into three categories:

First: a lack of familiarity with the vehicle. Every craft had a slightly different arrangement of controls as well as variations in their sensitivity. Sometimes a simple reflex, correct for one vehicle, doomed another. But Keith had spent months training almost exclusively with the shuttle designed to take him to Kerberos and had been flying the real thing for almost three months prior to the landing.

Second: intentionally pushing a craft to its limits. Keith loved testing the bounds of what a shuttle could do, seeing how fast he could accelerate or turn, especially under difficult circumstances. It hadn’t been unusual for him to use a bit of spare time in the sims to push whatever craft he was training with until it broke. While Shiro had considered that Keith might enjoy testing prototype ships in real life one day (a thought that had left him feeling nervous and faintly ill), he couldn’t imagine Keith trying that on the most important mission of his life with two passengers aboard.

Third: a loss of temper. Keith’s natural ability had garnered a lot of attention from the other pilots in his class, and some of them found competing against him understandably intimidating. A bit of teasing – some of it good-natured, some of it not – was all but inevitable. For all his skill, Keith had always had a hard time keeping his cool when someone insinuated that he wasn’t brave enough, clever enough, _good_ enough to do something. But neither Matt nor Professor Holt were the type to goad their own pilot, especially not during a crucial moment of an important mission.

So, unless being in space long-term had completely wrecked Keith’s mental stability, that was out as well.

“Watch where you’re going!”

Shiro jerked back to awareness just in time to notice he’d almost bumped into a cadet holding a large stack of papers.

“Sorry about that!”

Shiro helped them steady the swaying pile and smiled apologetically before stepping around them and continuing down the hall.

He really needed to get his focus back. His mind was all over the place. The Kerberos mission had become a dividing line in his life, neatly severing his world into 'before' and 'after' fragments.

It had all started so auspiciously.

Cheesy breadsticks at a pizza shop where the floor was always gritty, but the food was amazing. The two of them laughing, riding high on enthusiasm as the reality of Keith's achievement set in. Two slices of apple pie from a late-night diner on the way home, eaten with plastic forks in front of the TV. Keith catching his eye and smiling in that infectious way that made Shiro feel like the luckiest person in the world, even if he wouldn’t get to fly the mission of his dreams.

How could it have ended this way?

_How could it have been pilot error?_

The sound of shouting pulled him back to reality yet again, and he looked over just in time to see someone getting shoved out of Commander Iverson’s office. Someone he recognized.

_Katie?_

“I've told you already, Miss Holt, that information is classified! You have my sympathies for your loss, but sympathy alone is not enough cause to breach this facility's security! Now you can leave under your own power, or I can have security escort you off the premises.”

“I’m not going anywhere until you give me some answers! And none of that crap you told the papers.”

Shiro hadn’t spent a lot of time on the bad end of Iverson’s temper – he’d always been better than most at abiding by the rules and regulations – but he’d seen enough cadets chewed out to know when Iverson was at the end of his patience. He really didn’t want to see Matt’s little sister on the receiving end of that.

“Sir!” He stepped over and saluted as the withering attention of both combatants fell on him. The weight of their combined glares was… intimidating. “I can escort Miss Holt off the grounds.”

Katie glared at him, looking betrayed.

“Fine,” Iverson spat. “Make sure the kid understands she’s not welcome here anymore.”

“Kid?!”

But Iverson had already stepped back into his office, slamming the door behind him. Shiro relaxed his posture and sighed in relief. Even when it wasn’t directed at him, Iverson’s temper was something else.

“I didn’t need your help,” Katie objected, turning the remains of her ire his way with a fading glare.

“Trust me, it’s better this than getting thrown out by security,” Shiro assured her. “Besides, I don’t think the Commander was about to tell you anything useful.”

He let one hand hover near her back, not close enough to touch, but enough to herd her toward the building's exit.

Katie said nothing, but reluctantly let herself be escorted.

“It’s Shiro, right?” she asked as they stepped outside. “Did they tell you anything about Kerberos?”

Shiro grimaced.

“Nothing that wasn’t all over the news.”

“This whole thing stinks,” Katie growled, kicking a stray piece of gravel. “No video, no data feeds, and just some vague bullshit about ‘pilot error’. They won’t even say what _kind_ of error!”

She spun toward him and Shiro found himself transfixed by her expression, raw with the same desperate frustration he’d been trying to suppress these last few weeks.

“You knew a lot about the mission, right? You’re Matt’s friend. You knew the pilot. Matt said you even trained him. What do you think?”

The responsible part of Shiro wanted to tell her what people had been telling him for weeks: mistakes happen, even to the best of us. Accept it, grieve, move forward.

But Shiro was weak. He needed this validation of his fears and suspicions as much as Matt’s little sister did.

“It wasn’t pilot error,” he said with certainty that surprised even himself. “There’s no way Keith crashed that shuttle. Not without outside interference.”

Katie’s expression bloomed into a brilliant grin.

“You think they’re hiding something.”

“I _know_ they’re hiding something.” And, oh, it felt so good to finally say it. “I just don’t know how to find out what it is. Everything from the approach on Kerberos onward has been classified, and I don’t have anywhere near the clearance needed to access that.”

“Can you get me into the building?” Katie asked, visibly excited. “If I can just get to a terminal with access to the right network, I know I can bypass their security.”

“I really don’t think that would work,” Shiro cautioned. “Galaxy Garrison uses the same security protocols as the Pentagon.”

Katie smirked.

“I’m counting on it.”

Shiro paused as that sunk in.

“Do I want to know, or would knowing make me an accessory to something that could get me carted off in a black van?”

“I just wanted to see if I could get in! Spoiler alert: I totally could.”

This whole thing was escalating way faster than Shiro could keep up with.

Except… No, no it wasn't.

Already, he was making a mental list of all of the office building’s entrance points, security measures, maintenance schedules, and other factors. He had three plausible entrance scenarios already in mind and was running through each one’s pros and cons, weighing their risks against each other. For the first time since the Kerberos crew had been declared dead in space, Shiro’s mind felt perfectly clear.

He had a mission.

“I can get you in.”

Shiro’s focus was back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Boo-yah! Enter Pidge, stage left. Seriously, anyone capable of hacking into alien computer systems the way she does isn't going to have any trouble with common Earth systems.
> 
> -Important Question:  
> How attached are all you readers to the “Teen+” rating? As I'm drafting later chapters, I'm finding that this fic could eventually merit a “Mature” or “Explicit” rating due to violence and sexual content. If there are a lot of people who really want this fic to stay teen-friendly, I'll make little adjustments as needed to make that happen. If not, the rating will definitely go up.


	4. In Search Of What's Lost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith has a bad time. Shiro and Katie get to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shit’s starting to get real! Based on reader feedback, I've decided to raise this story's rating from T to E. No sexy bits in the immediate future, but we'll get there!
> 
> This chapter includes some gore and body horror, courtesy of the galra. You’ve been warned!

Keith tightened his grip on his left arm just below the shoulder. The limb was too thoroughly bloodied for him to see how bad the damage actually was. All he knew for sure was that he couldn't move his hand.

He'd won, though. He'd beaten that... _thing_ they'd sent out against him. Now, all around him, the alien crowd roared for his victory.

The thing they'd made him fight had been a fucking horror, easily the size of a van with a long insectoid body, lots of claw-tipped legs, and no eyes. That hadn’t stopped it from finding him, though. With every step he'd taken, its head had twitched in his direction, sensing the vibrations through the floor.

Keith had been so focused on how to out-maneuver it that he’d forgotten to be on guard for other strange abilities. He’d learned too late that the creature's jaws could project forward out of its mouth, biting even when Keith thought he was safely out of range. He’d barely yanked his arm back in time to avoid losing it entirely.

In the end, Keith had killed it – cut its fucking legs off one-by-one with the laser sword the galra had given him until the monster was bleeding and thrashing on the floor. Then he’d hacked away at any part of the thing that looked vital until it stopped moving. It hadn’t exactly been a clean kill. The crowd had loved it.

Distantly, Keith wondered who the poor bastard was who had to clean the Arena between fights and almost laughed.

_That might be the blood loss kicking in._

Out of the corner of his eye, Keith saw one of the side doors open. His cue to exit. Keith forced himself to stand and staggered out of the Arena, using the last dregs of his adrenaline to propel himself forward. His body was heavy, but his head felt light. He needed healing, badly.

Usually, there were a handful of sentry bots waiting in the room, weapons raised, ready to escort him either to the med pods or back to the cell he shared with the Holts. Today, three hooded figures awaited him instead. Two wore strange masks that made Keith think of birds with too many eyes, but the one standing up front was bare-faced.

“You’re new,” Keith observed with forced calm. His voice came out so ragged he barely recognized it as his own.

“I am Haggar, leader of the Druids,” the unmasked galra stated, it's voice rough, but noticeably feminine. Idly, Keith noted that this was the first female galra he'd seen.

“Emperor Zarkon is satisfied that he’s seen the extent of your abilities,” she continued. “Further testing would be pointless.”

“Testing?” Keith spat. “Is that what you call this?” His voice rose at the end, anger sharpening his words even as his vision blurred. Pain was finally starting to penetrate the adrenaline haze, turning his arm into a brand. He thought of the deactivated laser sword at his side and how very little time it would take to grab it and cross the small room to plunge it into Haggar’s throat. Then he thought of the Holts, still caged back in their cell, guarded by aliens ready to butcher them on command if he stepped out of line.

Keith’s fingers twitched, but he didn't touch the sword.

“Apply a tourniquet to that arm and bring him to my lab,” Haggar ordered the masked figures, turning away from Keith without responding. “It’s time to begin making improvements.”

-

“Hold up,” Shiro whispered. “Let me check to make sure it’s clear.”

Katie nodded in acknowledgment, letting Shiro go ahead in the dark.

It was just past 2am, and as far as Colleen Holt knew, her daughter was asleep in bed. The deception was for the best, really. Katie doubted her mother would approve of her little girl breaking into a secure government building, especially so late on a school night.

“All right, we’re clear,” Shiro whispered, waving her forward.

They'd taken a few days to stake out the office building in preparation. Katie had managed to hack Galaxy Garrison's surveillance footage and found that the building was quietest between the hours of 2 and 3am. Late enough that the night owls had gone home; early enough that even the earliest birds were still in bed. She'd even managed to identify a few blind spots that the security cameras didn't quite cover.

“Remember to stay close to the wall,” Katie urged him. “You should be fine as long as you stay under the awning.”

“Right.”

They edged along the side of the building, heading for the seldom-used back door. It had the usual dismal look of a service entrance, windowless and unadorned, flanked by garbage bins and a few stacked “wet floor” signs.

“Give me the code,” Katie ordered crouching in front of the numbered panel by the door, barely visible in the dark.

“I'm pretty sure I can type a code in as well as anyone,” Shiro said, but handed her the battered yellow sticky note anyway.

“Hey, who’s the tech expert here?”

Shiro huffed a short laugh under his breath.

The keypads that secured each of the office building’s metal doors were standard 10-digit interfaces, numbered 0-9. The code unlock them was six digits long, which, with repeat digits permitted, meant that there were exactly one million possible combinations. Three incorrect tries in a row would set off the silent alarm and summon security.

Of course, Katie could have found a way to hack the keypads, just as she could anything digital, but Shiro had just had to go and simplify things. The keypads and the long code seemed like excellent security measures until one recalled that humans are terrible at remembering arbitrary numerical sequences. Shiro had swiped the sticky note with the oh-so-secret password off of a janitorial cart he’d seen in the hall.

Sometimes the simplest hacking methods were the most effective.

Once they were in, Shiro took point again. It would be easier to explain his presence in the building than Katie’s if they ran into anyone. Each time they reached a point where the corridors intersected, Shiro gestured toward a door jam or other hiding spot Katie could use before peering around the corner, identifying the next points of cover, and motioning her forward.

For a guy who acted so straight-laced, he had a surprising talent for breaking and entering.

It didn’t take long for them to arrive at the door to Iverson’s office. As the highest ranking officer on-site, his terminal was the only one guaranteed to have access to the files they needed. Of course, the lock on his office door was considerably more sophisticated than the ones on the external doors. Katie could disable the alarm attached to it easily enough, but the lock itself would have taken time and a nicer set of lock picks than she currently owned.

Fortunately, during the same reconnaissance that had yielded the sticky note, Shiro had identified a vent just above the office door. It was small and bolted shut, but Katie was also small, and she had a pocket wrench.

“Here,” Shiro whispered, kneeling with his back to the door, one knee raised like a step. “If you get on my shoulders, I can get you up there.”

Katie nodded and stepped up on Shiro’s knee. She hesitated at first, because even if he was a solid-looking guy, she was still putting her full weight on him in her shoes. But when he didn’t flinch or show any other signs of discomfort, she gained confidence and climbed up on his shoulders using the wall for balance.

“Ready?”

“Ready.”

He stood up so easily Katie may as well have not been there at all.

_What’s this guy made of?_

_Grade-A beef_ , Matt’s reply supplied itself automatically in her head, and she suppressed the urge to giggle and cry at the same time. She missed her brother's stupid jokes so much.

The bolts on the vent took a little work. Shiro had to hold her feet in place on his shoulders so that Katie could get the leverage she needed with her wrench. Finally, the bolts loosened. Katie handed the vent cover down to Shiro, wiggled through the open space, and dropped down carefully on the other side. Once she hit the ground, she gave Shiro a thumbs-up through the office’s glass window. Shiro nodded at the signal and turned away to keep watch.

Prior to the Kerberos mission, Katie hadn't known Shiro very well, though she'd been aware of him in a vague “older brother's friend” kind of way. He'd come over a few times to do homework, but Katie had usually been holed up with her computer, working on her next project. She'd known that he'd been assigned as her brother’s pilot for the simulators and that he was some kind of hotshot at the Garrison, but that had been about it.

After their meeting at the Garrison office, Katie had done some research by hacking the Garrison’s website. As desperate as Katie was for real information on her father and brother, she wasn't about to try to pull off a heist without knowing her accomplice.

Takashi Shirogane, widely known as “Shiro”, was a promising fourth-year trainee in Galaxy Garrison’s pilot program. He’d come to the attention of high-level officers early on due to his natural aptitudes for piloting and leadership, as well as all-around high marks in academic courses. He was well-liked, held multiple records on the simulators, and was generally regarded as prime officer material.

For someone who couldn't afford to be choosey about their allies, Katie had gotten pretty lucky.

Leaving the overhead lights off, Katie booted up Iverson's computer and got to work: circumventing login procedures during start-up, running some searches, fudging some permissions, and- Hmm... there were a few possible targets tagged “Kerberos Incident”, all in the same restricted folder.

Time to go in for the kill.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Shiro move and glanced over. He was looking down the hall, visibly concerned. He gave her a quick gesture, palm facing down - “lay low”. Katie turned off the computer screen to kill the tell-tale glow and ducked behind the desk. Now that she was paying attention, she could hear footsteps coming closer.

She hoped Shiro could handle it. She was too close to stop now.

“Shiro?” a familiar woman's voice asked. “What are you doing here this time of night?”

“Professor Madison!” Shiro greeted with forced cheer.

The name clicked: it was one of her dad’s colleagues. He'd always loved having fellow biology professors over for dinner, and Katie had met most of them at one time or another. She didn’t dare peek around the desk to look, but her mind supplied the image of a middle-aged black woman wearing thick cat-eye glasses.

“I was actually hoping you might still be here,” Shiro continued. “I... had some questions about yesterday's lecture. The one about biological anomalies in low-pressure environments?”

“It's a little past my office hours, young man.”

“Well, I was having trouble sleeping, so...”

“So you decided to come to my office in the middle of the night to discuss the frailty of human biology in the near-vacuum of space?”

There was a pause.

“Yes?”

Katie resisted the urge to bang her head against the desk. Barely.

“I understand perfectly!”

“You do?”

_She does?_

“Of course I do! I, too, have lain awake many a night, contemplating my own mortality in the face of the void. Step into my office, Shiro! The biology department got a new shipment of fetal pigs last week for our vacuum chamber experiments, and I'm sure you'd find the results fascinating!”

“That certainly sounds... interesting.”

Two sets of footsteps receded into the distance, followed by the opening and closing of a door. Katie gave a silent salute in honor of Shiro's sacrifice. There were reasons she favored computer science over biology.

Switching the computer screen back on, Katie returned to her mission. She had identified the files she needed. Now, she just had to work through the encryption surrounding them. It took her a few tries – the Garrison’s tech really was top-notch – but even the most secure systems had their weaknesses.

Finally, the “Access Granted” text box flashed victoriously across the screen.

“Yes!”

Katie opened the target folder and started scrolling through its contents. Most of them were images of Kerberos, taken on the day of ‘pilot error’. Katie opened the first of them, a satellite picture of the landing site with a tiny reflective dot on the surface. It had been circled and labeled “KERBEROS SHUTTLE”.

Her breath caught. They'd made it. The crew had made it to Kerberos. The shuttle had landed intact. The pilot hadn't crashed.

Katie scrolled through the subsequent images. They were taken from too far away to provide much resolution. It was hard to tell if a given speck was a rock or an astronaut. But then, Katie clicked to the next image, and the shuttle was simply... gone.

She frowned. Clicked back and forth between the current and previous images.

There was no debris, no sign of seismic activity. If the shuttle had taken off, there would have been scorch marks from the thrusters. Instead, there was just... nothing.

Katie checked the timestamps. The imaging satellite was locked in geosynchronous orbit over the Kerberos landing site and had been programmed to take pictures every hour. One of those hours was missing.

No way it was an error. The missing images had to be stored somewhere else. Maybe at a higher clearance level? But she'd breached the highest clearance the Garrison offered! At least... she'd thought she had.

Frustrated, Katie went back to look through the rest of the folder's contents, hoping for clues. The only thing besides the images were a handful of audio files with an extra layer of encryption. Katie's fingers itched to get to work on them, but she didn't know how much longer she had. She pulled a small thumb drive out of her pocket, plugged it in, and started copying the contents of the folder. She could sort the rest out at home.

As she waited for the download to complete, her thoughts churned. What could have happened during that missing hour to make an entire shuttle and crew disappear without a trace? What did this mean for her brother? her father? Could they still be alive?

The sound of footsteps pulled her attention back to the present. Shiro? No, they were coming from the wrong direction. But there shouldn't have been anyone else around at this hour, unless... Realization brought her up short.

Many of the Garrison's computer terminals used two-factor authentication, meaning that a message was sent to the user's phone to confirm their identity every time they logged in. Katie had thought she'd bypassed this by circumventing the login procedure, but what if the notification response was bound to a different event? An event like trying to access classified documents?

_Shit._

Katie checked the progress on the files copying to her thumb drive.

**92%**

So close…

The footsteps were almost to the door. Definitely heavy enough to be Iverson's.

**97%**

Katie shifted her weight nervously.

**Download Complete**

She yanked the thumb drive and shoved it in her shoe, straightening up just as the door unlocked.

-

“Of course, with pig fetuses you don't get the full effect of the intestinal evacuation that accompanies hard vacuum exposure, but they still provide useful metrics on tissue swelling.”

“Uh... huh...” Shiro liked to think he was a pretty good listener. It was a skill that normally served him well and that he was glad to have. This was not one of those times.

As a mature and well-educated adult, Shiro understood that science could be a messy process, and the biological sciences more than most. However, as Professor Madison cheerfully clicked from one image of bloated porcine tissue to the next, Shiro began to suspect that he'd wildly underestimated just how gross some science – important, necessary science, he reminded himself – could be.

“Of course, in _living_ tissue the swelling would naturally decrease over time post-exposure, but we prefer to minimize the use of live subjects for these kinds of experiments. Oh! Professor Irving's research is finally up on the network. Have you ever seen a fully dissected cow's eye?”

When the sound of raised voices filtered into the office, Shiro felt a brief yet powerful flicker of relief before concern kicked in.

_Katie._

“What on earth?” Professor Madison turned away from her computer with a frown and led the way out the door.

Just down the hall, Katie was having a stare-down with Iverson while an anonymous security guard restrained her by the arms.

“I saw the satellite images. There was no evidence of a crash!”

Shiro's breath caught. No crash. There was no crash.

_Keith didn't crash._

“Those photos are classified!” Iverson shouted, looking ready to bust a vein.

“Katie?” Professor Madison asked, bewildered.

The commander did a double-take that, under any other circumstances, Shiro would have found amusing.

“And what the hell is he doing here?” Iverson demanded, his glare fixing itself squarely on Shiro.

Shiro fumbled for an answer, but fortunately, Professor Madison responded on his behalf.

“Shiro and I were discussing the latest research on the effects of hard vacuum exposure on living organisms.”

“It's... riveting stuff,” Shiro affirmed, trying to sound engaged rather than queasy. Katie caught his eye and had the gall to give him an amused smirk.

_Definitely Matt’s little sister._

“And how the hell did he get in here?” Iverson growled.

“That's...” Professor Madison paused, apparently realizing for the first time that Shiro shouldn’t have been able to enter the building. “How _did_ you get in here?”

“I...”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Katie give a subtle shake of her head and understood. There was no reason for both of them to go down for this.

“I saw one of the faculty members punch in the code a few days ago,” Shiro lied. “Sorry. I know we're not supposed to use it without authorization.”

“For f- Am I the only one around here who gives a damn about this facility's security??” Iverson demanded rhetorically. He turned sharply to the security guard keeping Katie restrained.

“Escort Miss Holt to the main office and get her mother on the phone. Make sure everyone knows that she's not welcome on Garrison property ever again! Shirogane...”

Iverson paused just long enough to give him a suspicious glare. Shiro tried not to look guilty. There was nothing concrete tying him to Katie's hack, but he knew his presence was too suspicious to be ignored.

“ _Out_ ,” Iverson finally ordered. “You can talk to your professors during office hours like everyone else. Professor Madison...”

Here, he faltered. Madison arched an eyebrow.

Most of the Garrison's tenured professors had been granted official ranks when they came to work for the program (often to the chagrin of the military professionals). Shiro didn’t know Professor Madison’s rank off the top of his head, but right now he was willing to bet that she was the only person in the room – well, hallway – that Iverson couldn't completely overrule.

In the end, Iverson just sighed heavily and rubbed his eyes.

“Go home and get some sleep. And for the love of all that's holy, stop showing students those pig fetuses!”

The guard led a grumbling Katie off to the main office and Shiro, having been thoroughly dismissed, saluted both the commander and professor and started to make his way to the exit. Shiro spared a sympathetic thought for the unpleasant conversation Katie was about to have, but as bad as he felt about her getting caught, his mind kept swirling around the knowledge that _Keith hadn't crashed._

As he walked away, he could hear the tail end of Iverson and Madison’s conversation in the background.

“The vacuum experiments aren't restricted research,” the professor protested.

“No, but they're disgusting.” Iverson went into his office, continuing to speak in a grumble, “All these academic types... Might as well be herding a whole damned pack of cats.”

“Actually, I think you'll find it's a _clowder_ of cats.”

“ _Thank you_ , Professor Madison,” Iverson ground out through gritted teeth.

A tiny smirk pulled at Shiro’s lips. It was nice to know that there was someone who could get away with stepping on Iverson's last nerve.

Now, he just had to wait for Katie to contact him so they could meet up and debrief.

_Patience_ , he reminded himself. At least he had one thing to tide him over: he'd been right. The pilot hadn't crashed. 

_I knew you could do it, Keith._

-

_“Hey, Buddy.”_

_Keith looked up to see Shiro standing over him in sweat pants and a tank top: his usual gym clothes. They were on the sparring mat, Keith realized. He must have gotten knocked down._

_“You hit the ground pretty hard there. Need a hand?” Shiro smiled companionably and held out his hand in offering._

_Keith tried to raise his right hand to accept it, but... he couldn’t. He grunted in frustration. Something was pinning his arm down, holding it in place. He tried to lift his left arm instead._

_There was nothing there._

_“You okay, Keith?” Shiro asked in exactly the same tone, as if everything was perfectly normal._

_But Keith's arm wasn’t there._

Suddenly, Keith was back in reality, strapped down on the operating table. His throat was raw and dry. He’d been screaming, having long ago given up on stubborn silence. There was salt crusted on his cheeks from sweat or tears. He didn’t know which and was honestly past the point of caring. Every part of him felt heavy, and he couldn’t say if it was the drugs they’d given him or just plain exhaustion from the Arena battle followed by hours of agony in surgery.

He thought it had been hours. Must have been...

Whatever they’d given him had barely been enough to dull the pain, but had kept him from passing out until the very end. He dared to look down at his left arm and saw that everything below the first few inches had been neatly severed, all of the veins cauterized and nerves tied off with surgical precision.

His arm was gone.

His _arm_ was _gone_.

They’d taken his arm, and he hadn’t been able to do a damn thing about it. He’d cursed and screamed and fought against his restraints and finally even _begged_ , and it hadn’t made the least bit of difference. No matter what had happened in his life before, no matter how hard or unfair things were, he’d always at least had the option of fighting back. But now…

He couldn’t do anything. There was nothing he could do to stop anything they might do to him.

“We should complete the first stage of the procedure while the wound is still fresh.” The voice of the galra surgeon who’d done most of the work pulled him from his thoughts.

Haggar seemed to be ignoring the surgeon, opting instead to stare at the readouts of one of her machines with what appeared to be great interest. Vaguely, Keith remembered samples of blood and tissue being taken from him and fed into that machine, but damned if he knew what for.

More importantly, if everything he’d just endured didn’t even count as the “first stage” of whatever these bastards had in mind, Keith didn’t know if he’d survive the rest. He was already beaten, exhausted, wrung out on pain, and – apparently – hallucinating vividly.

He waited on Haggar’s reply with a kind of resigned horror, but instead of speaking she turned to another console and tapped a few buttons, summoning Zarkon’s face to the screen.

“Why do you disturb me?” the emperor demanded.

“Sire,” Haggar lowered her head as she spoke, “I have an update on our progress with your... recent acquisition. The procedure is going well. By combining our bionic technologies with infusions of quintessence to enhance his natural abilities, we are sure to provide you with a most formidable weapon.”

“As I expected. Is there anything else?”

“There is, in fact.” Haggar glanced over at Keith, giving him a searching look. “While we were profiling his genetic code, we came across something interesting.”

Her eyes locked with Keith's, and her mouth slid into a sharp grin.

“Something _very_ interesting.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you wondering: yes, it’s REALLY hard to remind myself to refer to Pidge as Katie.
> 
> Inspiration for the Arena monster's projectile jaws comes courtesy of the goblin shark. You can check out videos of it feeding on YouTube!
> 
> Thank you for all of the amazing comments so far! It's really wonderful to get to hear what you're thinking and what you're looking forward to. I like to try to respond to all of the comments I get (even if it takes me a while ^_^;;) so feel free to ask questions if you're so inclined.


	5. Moving Forward

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back on planet Earth, life goes on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhh!! This took so much longer than intended! Sorry about that. ^_^;; This story has not been abandoned. I hit a bad patch of writer’s block with this chapter when I realized that some of the scenes I wanted to include would screw up the pacing, and I had to shuffle things around. Thank you so much for all of your comments and kudos! They really helped push me to keep going. This story never would have made it so far without all of you. <3
> 
> We’re almost done with the “setup” part of the story, so bear with me! Also, there is a bit of a time-skip near the end, so look out for that last step: it’s a doozy.

“Here.”

Katie shoved her phone, unlocked and opened to the proper app, into Shiro’s startled hands. After the all-nighter she’d pulled, manners weren’t really her strong point. Still, she owed Shiro answers, even if it meant meeting up with him at the park when she’d rather be napping at home. Shiro's eyes widened as they settled on the screen.

“These are pictures of the landing site,” he said, tone reverent. “They really did make it.”

“Yup,” Katie agreed, flopping down next to him on the plastic bench. She’d had her big moment of awe back at the Garrison. Now, she just wanted to tilt her head back and close her eyes for a bit.

Shiro had chosen them a seat by the bike path. It had a good view of the rest of the park, letting them observe everyone's comings and goings, and anyone cycling on the path would be moving too quickly to catch much of their conversation. A solid choice.

...Or maybe it had just been the only free bench in the park. Gah. Her brain was still stuck in spy mode.

“You look beat,” Shiro commented, glancing over. “Did you get any sleep last night?”

“Not really.” The sun felt pretty nice. Air temperature was good. Allergies were under control. Maybe she could grab a quick cat-nap while Shiro looked over those images.

“Did your mom give you a hard time?”

Nope. More talking. She could do that. Probably.

“She took me out to an early pancake breakfast.” Katie grinned to herself, recalling the blueberry syrup. “She put on a good show for the security guys – swore I’d be grounded until I finished college – but as soon as we got in the car, she just wanted to know what I’d found.”

Pride and concern. A desperation for the truth that was no less than Katie’s.

Katie hadn’t meant to give her mom gray hairs, but it still felt good to look at Colleen’s face and see something other than the flatness of grief that had dominated it for the last few weeks. Once Katie had explained her findings and the two of them got home, her mother had even gone and done her makeup for the first time since the funeral.

Katie sometimes poked fun at her mom’s “1950s housewife aesthetic”, but it was still a relief to see it return. The whole hair, makeup, and jewelry ritual seemed to bring her a little bit closer to her old self. It had always been part of Colleen's daily routine, and when she'd stopped it had been almost as disconcerting as if she’d stopped eating.

“I’m glad you didn’t get into too much trouble,” Shiro said. “Sorry about last night. I couldn't figure out how to wrap things up with Professor Madison to get back to you.”

“Not your fault,” Katie assured him. “I tripped a stupid notification thing. Someone did _not_ configure that security system according to best practices. We’re just lucky Iverson bought your story.” That had been a near thing, too. It was probably Shiro's reputation as a good, rule-abiding student that had saved him as much as the hasty lie.

“For now,” Shiro conceded cautiously. “Every time I see Iverson, he looks at me like I’m trying to steal his wallet.”

Katie chuckled, picturing the Commander’s suspicious, one-eyed glare.

“What do you think of the last image?” she asked, bringing them back to the topic at hand. “The one where the ship’s missing.”

“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “There's no thruster burn, no seismic upheaval, no drag marks...” He frowned. “We’re missing something.”

“Damn right we are,” Katie agreed, pleased he’d caught on. “The orbiting satellite takes pictures every hour. One of them is missing.”

Shiro stared at the photos intently, mulling that over.

“That gives us a two-hour window,” he mused aloud. “We know that the shuttle landed. We know it disappeared by some means that doesn’t leave visible traces – at least, nothing in the part of the electromagnetic spectrum captured by this satellite. Do we have anything else?”

And that was her cue.

Katie sat up and took back her phone, switching over to an audio app and pulling a pair of earbuds out of her pocket.

“Mom let me stay home from school so I could finish decrypting this.” She passed the phone back to him. “Listen and tell me what you think.”

She wanted his honest opinion with as little interference or suggestion as possible. Her conclusions, however well-founded, were almost too radical to share. She needed independent confirmation.

Shiro gave her an inquisitive look, but obediently put the earbuds in and tapped ‘play’.

Katie didn't have to listen to know what he was hearing; she'd played and replayed the clip for almost an hour after decrypting it. At first, there was just static with some strange, garbled noises in the background. Slowly, it resolved into something harsh and growling, but also syllabic.

“It sounds a bit like animal sounds, but… regular,” Shiro observed, brow furrowed. “There’s a pattern. A language?”

Katie nodded for him to continue, sitting forward on the bench.

“But… not like any language I’ve ever heard,” he continued hesitantly. “I’d almost say it’s a conlang, like Klingon, or a remix of normal speech, but… these sounds… I don’t think human vocal chords can make sounds like this.”

Shiro swiped the screen to bring up a visual of the sound waves on the screen.

“Are you sure it’s not some kind of audio manipulation?”

“I’m sure,” Katie said. “There are no markers for any kind of alteration.”

“Katie, what _is_ this?”

She reached over and pulled up the file’s metadata with a few taps.

“It’s a recording from the Garrison's passive monitoring equipment, configured to receive signals originating outside our solar system. This activity occurred almost exactly the same time the Kerberos mission lost contact.”

“Outside our solar system? That’s...”

Katie could practically see the impossible reality sinking in on his expression.

“What else could it be?” she prompted.

Shiro leaned back abruptly.

“Aliens.” His voice was stunned, breathless.

“Matt, Keith, my dad… They all went to Kerberos looking for alien life. Based on this, I’d say they found it.”

For a long moment, they were both quiet as the reality of the situation sank in. Katie watched a cyclist whiz by in a blur of spandex while she waited for Shiro’s personal reality to finish rearranging itself.

When he finally spoke, his tone was surprisingly even.

“In a search and rescue mission, you always operate under the assumption that the person you’re looking for is alive.” He said it as if he was reciting a lesson, as if reminding himself. “Whatever is necessary for them to have done, or whatever needs to have happened for them to be alive, you assume that that’s true and base the starting parameters of your search on that.”

Katie nodded. It was an optimistic perspective, but still logical. A living person might need help right away, but a corpse would stay a corpse no matter how long you took to find it.

Her mind shied away from the last part of that analysis.

“So based on that...” she nudged.

“Based on that...” Shiro shook his head as if he could hardly believe what he was saying. “Based on that, we are now operating under the assumption that Matt, Keith, and Commander Holt were abducted by aliens.”

As soon as he finished saying it, he glanced around as if to make sure no one had overheard. Katie understood the impulse. Talking about alien abductions in public wouldn’t do favors for anyone's reputation. Fortunately, no one seemed to have heard.

“If Galaxy Garrison knows about this, they're probably looking into it already,” Katie pointed out. “We need to find a way to piggyback on their investigation. I can make some of my own tech, but nothing like what they have access to. Well, not without breaking several international laws and local zoning ordinances.”

Shiro's expression turned thoughtful.

“The Garrison’s been looking to promote more of their own to high-level positions. Since it’s a relatively new program, a lot of the COs are transplants from other departments. It’s not ideal.”

“So all you have to do is convince them you're an ideal candidate for promotion,” Katie supplied, catching on. “Based on your personnel file, I'd say you have a shot.”

“How did you get my...? Never mind. Forgot who I was talking to for a moment.”

Katie gave a shit-eating grin that would have made her brother proud.

“So? How long will it take you to get clearance?”

Shiro 'hmm'ed.

“I'm not technically an officer yet, but there were people talking about promotion even before Kerberos. That was before my grades started slipping, but I can fix that. Still, I'd need to be a commissioned officer to get the kind of clearance we're talking about. That could take years.”

“The Kerberos team might not have years,” Pidge argued. “Can't you just get me back inside?”

“It won't be that easy,” Shiro cautioned. “The entire security staff knows your face now, and the next time you get caught, you and anyone helping you may be looking at a lot worse than a slap on the wrist. Believe me, I want to find them as much as you do, but we can't do anything for Keith or your family if we end up in prison.”

Katie glared down at her hands. Shiro wasn't wrong, but it still didn't seem like enough. And what was she supposed to do for the next few years while Shiro worked his way up the Garrison's ranks?

“I need to think,” she announced abruptly, standing and snatching her phone back from Shiro.

“Katie...”

She could tell he was trying for placating, but the tone came out just a shade too paternalistic for her liking.

“I'll let you know when I figure something out!” she tossed over her shoulder as she walked away. Already, her mind was flitting from option to option.

The nap would have to wait.

-

Over the next weeks, the pile of unfinished work on Shiro’s desk shrank rapidly. He had a mission now, and his focus had returned. His instructors’ expressions had lost their edge of concern and guarded disapproval and regained their usual friendliness and expectation. Aside from the occasional suspicious glare from Iverson, his academic career had returned to normal.

“Shiro!”

Professor Montgomery waved him over just as he was about to leave the classroom. He had half an hour before his next class, so he wasn’t in a rush. A good thing, too. The professor was pleasant enough company, but he tended to ramble.

“Yes, Professor?”

“I just thought you’d like to know I finished grading your make-up exam last night. 94%! Looks like you’re back at the top of the class.”

Shiro suppressed a relieved sigh. He’d done better than he’d thought. Montgomery’s problems were notoriously convoluted.

“Thanks for letting me know. Sorry it took so long to get around to it.”

The professor waved off the apology.

“I’d say a lapse in performance was to be expected, given the circumstances. We were all shaken by what happened to the Kerberos Mission, poor souls.”

Shiro nodded, trying to think of the right phrase to politely end the conversation, but the professor kept talking.

“They really should have picked you as the pilot instead,” Montgomery complemented, his tone upbeat. “I’d wager the whole thing would have gone a lot smoother with you at the helm.”

Shiro’s jaw clenched around a harsh retort, and he tried to force down the acid heat of anger twisting in his stomach. The cheer drained steadily from Montgomery’s face, and Shiro knew his expression had betrayed him. Quickly, he searched for the words to end the conversation without giving voice to his temper.

“Without knowing more about the incident, I can’t really speak to that.” Shiro's tone came out harsher than he intended, almost flat.

“I, uh...”

If nothing else, Montgomery had the good grace to look mortified at his faux pas, but Shiro didn’t trust himself to continue the conversation any further.

“Have a good day, Professor,” he concluded abruptly, turning on his heel and leaving the room with more speed than was strictly polite. Still, it was better than shouting at a faculty member and ending up back in Dr. Mehta’s office, or on suspension.

It wasn’t the first time Shiro had heard that kind of speculation. People were quick to point out Keith’s temper, his risk-taking behavior, or any other flaw that might be blamed for the supposed crash. They were just as quick to follow it up by pointing at Shiro – steady, reliable, experienced Shiro – and declaring that he should have gone instead. What had the Garrison been thinking, choosing that wild boy when a level-headed pilot like _Shiro_ was on hand?

Usually, people had the good sense not to say that kind of thing to Shiro’s face, but not always.

It was even worse now that Shiro knew that Keith hadn’t crashed at all, that he’d brought his shuttle safely to the very edge of known space and landed it perfectly on a trackless moon. In the face of that knowledge, every idle comment blaming Keith for the lost mission felt like slander, and the fact that people held Shiro up as some sort of obvious replacement made him feel complicit every time he had to bite the truth back behind his teeth.

Worse still was the fact that the Garrison brass knew that Keith wasn’t at fault but continued to use him as a scapegoat regardless.

_Patience_ , he reminded himself, taking a deep breath to cool the smoldering outrage that had become so much a part of him lately. _Patience yields focus._

He would fix this.

He was going to fix this, but all of his hard work would mean nothing if he lost his temper now. He needed to stay in control and keep working. He only needed to check off a few more requirements before they promoted him and he could start working his way up the ranks in earnest. He would make sure that everything came to light in the end.

If nothing else, Shiro would see to it that Keith was remembered properly. He deserved that much, at least. Shiro desperately wanted to believe that Keith was still alive and could be saved, but it was hard to keep up hope. Even if the Kerberos crew _had_ been picked up by aliens, there was no guarantee they’d been kept alive. The whole scenario was still so surreal.

Shiro didn’t know how Katie kept up faith in the crew’s survival – whether it was courageous optimism or simply denial. At this point, he’d be happy to borrow either.

“Excuse me, sir? It’s Shiro, right?”

The familiar voice snapped Shiro out of his reverie, and he did an alarmed double-take.

_Matt?_

No, not quite. The cadet was just a bit shorter, and the face was… _Katie_?

“Uh...”

He was pretty sure this was Katie. Well, unless she or Matt had a secret twin they’d been hiding from him which, honestly, he wouldn’t put past them.

“I was hoping you could point me to some of my classes,” maybe-Katie said. “I figured you probably know where all the buildings are.”

“Sure. No problem, uh…?”

“Pidge,” the cadet supplied quickly. “Pidge Gunderson.”

“Right. Pidge.” Shiro tried the name out. “Let’s step outside, then.”

Out in the courtyard, “Pidge” pulled out her – his? their? – campus map and tugged Shiro in close before speaking in a lowered voice.

“Told you I’d figure something out.”

Yup. Definitely Katie.

“This is certainly… something,” Shiro commented quietly. He kept his gaze fixed on the map and followed Pidge/Katie’s lead, pointing at various buildings on the paper so it would look like he was just providing directions. The look she gave Shiro told him she’d heard the skepticism in his voice and was not amused.

“Campus security is keeping an eye out for a 16-year-old girl, not an 18-year-old boy.”

_But you look just like Matt_ , Shiro wanted to object. He stopped himself just in time. He didn’t know how Katie would take the comment and decided he’d rather not find out in public while they were both trying to act normal.

“And the glasses?”

“It worked for Clark Kent.”

Shiro huffed in amusement. Matt had gotten corrective eye surgery before the mission so he wouldn’t have to worry about his glasses breaking 7.5 billion miles from the nearest optometrist’s office. He must have left them behind in his room instead of getting rid of them.

It figured. Matt always did have a hard time throwing things away – screws, twist ties, odd bits of scrap metal…

_“You never know what you’ll need for your next project!”_

Shiro could easily imagine Matt finding a use for the wire frames, tiny screws, and scratch-resistant lenses. He’d probably never expected Katie to wear them instead.

“Just be careful,” Shiro cautioned. “If we do find a way to get the crew back, we’ll probably need the Garrison on our side to pull it off.”

“Right. I’ll try to remember that.”

“That’s all I ask.” Shiro smiled and clapped Pidge on the shoulder, then kept speaking in a louder, more public voice. “Welcome to the Garrison, cadet!”

He smiled conspiratorially.

“Good luck.”

-  
-  
-

Shiro straightened his uniform in the mirror. The twin silver bars pinned to his collar glinted back at him, still new enough to catch him off guard.

_Lieutenant Takashi Shirogane._

It was almost a year to the day since the Kerberos crew had gone missing. A whole year since ‘pilot error’ had divided Shiro’s life neatly into “before” and “after” segments.

He’d risen through the ranks even more quickly than he’d anticipated thanks to the Garrison’s desperation for home-grown heroes following the Kerberos disaster. It didn’t hurt that the paperwork for his promotion to Warrant Officer had already been half filled out before his breakdown and temporary academic decline. As soon as his grades had picked up and his COs decided he was stable, the promotion had gone through.

A successful probe retrieval in Venus’ upper atmosphere followed by a particularly tricky asteroid sampling mission had prompted the brass to promote him up several more ranks, and Shiro suspected they were hoping to have him take a key role in the upcoming Martian terraforming and colonization project. After decades of planning and speculation, the project was finally approaching the point of viability. They would need a steady pilot who could handle rapidly-changing atmospheric conditions once things got underway. Even as Shiro thrilled at the prospect, his mind kept drifting back to Keith. If there was anyone suited for that kind of reflex-intensive flying, it would have been him.

Shiro’s room didn’t have any obvious mementos of his lost friends. He had pictures, but he didn’t leave them out, preferring to keep them secreted away in his wallet or cell phone. He only brought them out in private moments when he needed the inspiration or could afford the luxury of worry and grief.

There were still two single-wrapped lactase pills in Shiro’s wallet, even though he wasn’t lactose intolerant. Keith had always forgotten his medicine, and Shiro had fallen into the habit of carrying it for him. Leaving those pills there, as if he expected Keith to knock on his door any day and ask if he wanted to grab dinner, was the most overt sign of hope that Shiro could muster.

Hope was what kept Shiro moving these days. Hope, and a kind of grim determination to see his mission through to the end. Even if the crew had died back on Kerberos or at the hands of the aliens that found them, Shiro needed to know the whole truth. There’d be no rest for him until he did.

It was hope that had him leaving his room after dark to rendezvous with Pidge for one of their regular meetings on the dorm's roof. Sometimes they had new tidbits of information to share with each other; sometimes they just shared company. It helped to have someone else who understood.

Over time, they'd managed to collect more fragments of data from the Kerberos mission - data readouts, communication logs, experiment reports - but nothing that could tell them what they wanted to know. Pidge had managed to pick up more alien transmissions on homemade tech but hadn’t had any luck translating them. It had been ages since their last major breakthrough.

_One whole year._

Shiro sighed. It felt like he was treading water, like he was running far too slowly toward a constantly receding target. Logically, Shiro knew he was making progress faster than they’d ever hoped. With his latest promotion, they were closer to the truth now than they’d ever been. Still, every time he and Pidge met up with nothing concrete to show for their efforts he felt like they were losing ground.

Hopefully, tonight would be different.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don’t know how ranks work at Galaxy Garrison, but according to my research, the rank of Commander only exists in the Navy and Coast guard, so I’m referencing their ranking structures rather than the Army, Air Force, or Marines. At the same time, I’m treating Galaxy Garrison more as a combo military-educational institution than an actual branch of the armed forces, so if there are any deviations from military norms and culture, blame it on that.
> 
> Also, I can finally start referring to Pidge as Pidge!! It was so hard to remember to call her Katie for so long. And in the next chapter, we start to get into the more action-y parts of the story!
> 
> Not sure when I’ll have the next chapter done, but I’ll try not to have any more multi-month hiatuses. Thanks again for all the lovely comments! Hearing from readers really keeps me going. <3

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea how many chapters this thing will go on for or what the ideal stopping point would be. I have the next two chapters pretty well planned out, and this thing could get epic if the inspiration sticks around.
> 
> Comments fuel me, so let me know what you think and what you'd like to see!


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